How Technology is Changing Events [Infographic]

Technology and Social Media are deeply changing the way we market, consume and measure events. How about a nice infographic to sum up the impact of this change?

Last week I was at EIBTM. I had a blast. I also had the chance to speak to association planners about how to extend the reach of their annual meeting.

Truth is that I took the opportunity to hijack the presentation. In fact I’ve had an idea of showing event professionals how technology and social media impacted on events. What better opportunity than a prestigious audience!

The presentation went great and as I was about to publish it on this blog, I thought that an infographic might have worked better.

A Bit of Background and a Rant

The infographic shows practices that are no longer relevant to events and alternatives we can use.

I’ve created a “before” and “after” scenario that I am sure you’ll appreciate.

An interesting point to note is that all my suggestions are not, well, suggestions. They are actually the fruit of some extensive research I carried out over the last month (remember no posts up for a week? Here is what I was up to).

To be honest I am sick and tired of pundits, who did not know what Twitter was a year ago, bragging about what eventprofs should or should not do. I’ve realized I’ve been a bit of that pundit myself in some occasions.

Therefore for the good of the industry, let’s back up every suggestion we make with research. I am gonna be the first to start.

You’ll soon realize that there are very few social media/technology speakers or self proclaimed gurus who back up their “top tips” with facts. Those who do, have my respect.

Why “How Technology Is Changing Events” Infographic?

I believe it will be an effective reference to set your priorities for 2013. The infographic does not cover strategy as it is a very intimate subject. Nonetheless it gives you direction as to what tools should be prioritized going forward.

It also delivers a set of facts that you can use to justify the use of a particular tool with your boss.

It organizes all the above information in an easy to consume way thanks to the great design made by Beatrice Tagliaferri.

Steal It

You are more than welcome to download it, print it (although I won’t recommend that, let’s save some paper) or embed it on your website.

You can use the code I’ve prepared for you down below.

Enough said. Click on the image to see a large version of the infographic and remember to

Julius Solaris is the editor of EventManagerBlog.com, he is an international speaker and author of The Event App Bible, Engaging Events, Social Media for Events, The Good Event Registration Guide and The Annual Event Trends Report.

Thanks so much for putting this together, Julius! And for inviting us to steal and share it (yes, I took advantage of your kind offer). It’s pretty eye-opening when you stand back and look at just how much things have changed, and where those changes suggest we’re heading.

Hi Julius: As always, insightful and what’s best is that your writings are always from the ‘front lines’.

One comment regarding the infographic – first, it’s waaaaaay thorough and I agree, we all need to share fact-and-data based thinking…enough with the suppositions! I would recommend, however, that rather than “before” you use ‘THEN’ and rather than “after” you use ‘NOW’. Things have radically changed since we first met 5+ years ago and that isn’t slowing down – I think we’re just in the midst of what will happen next!